dr.ir. AP (Annet) Pauwelussen

I am an interdisciplinary-oriented marine social scientist with over a decade of experience working with communities and stakeholders in marine conservation and restoration research and practice, both in the tropics and in the temperate zone. I'm an assistant professor with the ENP group and collaborating professor with Ocean Nexus.

In 2017, I graduated for my PhD degree cum laude with the SDC group of Wageningen University with my project ‘Amphibious Anthropology’. I have a MSc degree (cum laude) in Development Sociology (Wageningen) and a MA in Cultural Anthropology (Leiden University).

In my research I investigate the diverging ways people know and value marine nature across  cultures, communities and sectors, and how this shapes marine conservation and restoration in practice. I am particulalry interested in the politics involved in what ways of knowing and relating to the sea takes precedence, considering structural power relations in marine governance, to explore possibilities for plural and more equitable ways of caring for ocean ecologies. I combine ethnography with mobile methods, and am inspired by environmental anthropology, science and technology studies, political ecology, feminist & queer theory and multispecies approaches.

NWO Veni: The Future of Past Reefs: Politics of Care in Oyster Restoration Across the Northern Alantic (2024-2028)
This project explores how different values, knowledge and histories of human-oyster relations are in- or excluded in current endeavors to restore oyster reefs, and/or in what ways such diversity can be enhanced or made more visible – as a condition for inclusive and equitable networks of marine restoration across sectors and (epistemic) communities.

Other current projects:

# Start Grant "Restoring Marine Natures in Southeast Asia and Beyond: Geopolitics Meets the Politics of Care" 2025-2028 (with Dr Zhu)

# Leading WP 1 "Knowledge Politics in Nature-Inclusive Offshore Wind Development in the Northsea" in the ECOAMARE consortium 2023-2027. (With Dr. Vandenbussche, VU)

# WP 6 "Data Technologies in Marine Biodiversity Monitoring" in the BeWild project (with Prof. Bush)